


The More I Give to Thee

by everysinglefuckingusernameistakenjesus



Series: Stars, Hide Your Fire [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: LATINOS IN SPACE, M/M, Stormpilot, bohdi my sweet child, gay losers, gays in space, love these boys, poe has a picture cassian under his pillow, you cannot convince me that poe dameron did not have a crush on cassian andor you cannot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:16:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everysinglefuckingusernameistakenjesus/pseuds/everysinglefuckingusernameistakenjesus
Summary: It wasn’t a big deal.That’s what he kept telling himself, anyway. It wasn’t a huge deal. No big whoop. No need for a ruckus. It was just a wordA word that had started countless wars and destroyed worlds.Totally not a big deal.---The 'L' word is scary and Finn needs help.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still completely devastated about Carrie. I wrote this forever ago, but I've just gotten up to posting it. I hope you guys like this, it's kind of lighter than the others. More to come soon.

It wasn’t a big deal. 

That’s what he kept telling himself, anyway. It wasn’t a huge deal. No big whoop. No need for a ruckus. It was just a word 

A word that had started countless wars and destroyed worlds. 

Totally not a big deal. 

Look, he knew that he didn’t know a lot about affection. He knew that he had no clue of social cues or how to interact with other people. He had spent his entire life trained to kill everyone not clad in white, so he didn’t really set a lot of time aside to gain any social skills. But he’s heard Poe say it before. Not to him, but to his pilots, to Snap and Jess, and even the General sometimes. Rey said it a lot, to him, to Poe, to Skywalker. He figured that she had spent her childhood alone and now that she had people, she liked telling them that they mattered to her. It was nice listening to her say it. But Finn was a little different. If he was honest, he was afraid of those words. He was so scared of what might happen if he showed any emotion. He was terrified of losing the people he cared about. The one person that he’d cared about, the only person that he ever talked to candidly, died the moment that they were put in the line of fire. It was like the universe had it out for him, that it was just waiting for him to tell someone that he cared to kill them brutality. It happened to Slip. What was keeping it from happening to Poe?

The point is that it happened and he said it and he couldn’t take it back. It wasn’t even intentional. He’d read a lot of books about love and in every one, the love interests spent a lot of time thinking about how and when they were going to say that word. People planned it for a long time, made sure that it was at the perfect moment. It didn’t really happen like that for him. It slipped out. It just sort of happened. Like life seemed to. And him screwing up every relationship that presented itself. 

Poe spent a lot of time with his ship. He knew that. After Poe had to abandon Shara, which was his third X-Wing (His first was a hand-me-down from his mother named Kes, which was the one he learned how to fly on while he was a teenager, and the second was one that was issued to him when he joined the Rebellion officially when he was eighteen, named Hope, which he abandoned on Jaku when he was captured.) He spent a lot of time working on every ship to make it his own, and this one was no different. Finn went with him to inspect it for the first time in the hangers. Poe had a checklist of requirements scribbled out on his hand, requirements that he ticked off one by one until he was satisfied. What Finn noticed about this ship in comparison to most others that he’d seen was its complete lack of character. Shara had been scratched and dented and her name was painted on her side in big, red letters. But this ship was relatively new, pretty much pristine, looked like it just came out of the metaphorical X-Wing box. After Poe declared it acceptable, the two of them spent about two weeks debating proper names and what would be painted on her side before Poe decided on Andor, the last name of a Resistance pilot that he had a crush on when he was a kid. He was outraged when he found out that Finn didn’t know who Cassian Andor was and had dragged him to the archives to pull every scrap of information that they had about Cassian Andor on record. 

“Dude, he was so cool.” Poe said excitedly waving his hands as he opened a holo pad to show a picture of a handsome if rugged man in a blue vest. “He was this badass pilot who grew up in the Rebellion and was one of the big players in the Rogue One Incident.” Rogue One. He recognized that. 

“Rogue One? I’ve heard that before. Wasn’t that an attack on a civilian base by the rebels?” He replied, furrowing his brow. Poe looked at him like he’d insulted the General. 

“What? No, dude, is that the shit that they shoved down your throat? Rogue One was the call sign of a ship that carried a small group of rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star that revealed a weakness that could destroy it. They were lead by a lady named Jyn Erso, the daughter of the scientist that built in the weakness, Gaylen Erso. Any way, Erso, Andor, an Imperial defector named Bodhi Rook, two protectors of a Jedi Temple, Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, and a droid called K-2SO broke into an Imperial base that had all of the information and records and shit, and they stole the plans for the Death Star and transmitted it to General Organa, while she was Princess Leia of Alderaan. They died, all of them, they got trapped on the planet while the Death Star destroyed it. And yeah, it was a really sad day for the Rebellion because hundreds of our brothers and sisters died, but because of their sacrifice, we were able to destroy the Death Star. It's because of those six that Skywalker and the General and Solo were able to win. They gave us hope.” Poe talked of them so fondly, retelling the tale of these people, his heroes with such wonder. Like he knew them in some past life. In many ways, Finn guessed, he was them. They were the Rebellion and so was he. They were the same. He had a spark in his eyes, the same spark that he had when he was working on his ship or flying. There was something about watching Poe talk about the things that he really loved, the things that he was passionate about. It made Finn feel so good to see him happy. He sparkled, sort of. Glowed. 

His space walk had left a little extra stardust on his skin.

“What?” Poe asked, looking at him a little funny. Finn realized that he had been staring at him. 

“Sorry, sorry, I was just-” he lost his train of thought. Poe laughed lightly, and the air felt a little awkward, and he searched for something to talk about. He reverted back to Poe’s story. “You said that there was an Imperial deserter?” 

“Oh yeah!” Poe said, rummaging through some holo pads and pulling one out. It revealed a thin, nervous looking man clad in a First Order- Imperial jumpsuit with long hair and goggles atop his head. Finn smiled softly at the image. He looked anxious. His hands were ringing in front of him, his shoulders hunched and his body almost folding in on itself. He looked like he knew that he shouldn’t be in the Resistance archives, but at the same time, almost neurotically proud of it. Because he chose to be there. Because that was the first real choice he made in his life and he felt in his gut that it was the right one. There was an adrenaline-panic hybrid running through him, the kind of high that drove you insane with excitement and dread. Something new was running through him, maybe bad, maybe good, but definitely new. Finn straightened his own shoulders, realizing he looked about the same. It never quite wore off. Poe was watching him. “Everybody thought that he was a nobody, he was a cargo pilot-”

“Sort of like me, you know, unnamed trooper and all.” Finn interjected. Poe smiled.

“Yeah, actually because everybody underestimated what the two of you could do. He defected because Gaylen Erso- the scientist- convinced him to carry a message to the rebels, and he decided to because he knew that it was the right thing to do. You did the same thing, you know, You should really do some more research on him. I think you might fall in love with him.” Finn scoffed. 

“That won’t happen I’m already in love with you.” 

Shit.

The words were out of his mouth before he even knew it was open.  
Poe looked shocked, like he’d been slapped in the face. His soft eyes widened and he stared at Finn for an ungodly second before blinking and looking down with an awkward laugh. Finn blushed deeply and looked at the picture of Bodhi again to try and alleviate the tension. That nervous man suddenly looked worried for him, like he could see the way that this was going and wished he could help, but was stuck in the archives thirty years in the past. He looked like he knew exactly how this ship was going to crash. A new thought sprouted to his head, a thought that he hadn’t really even considered before. 

What if Poe didn’t love him back?

Okay, so Poe was friendly and he spent a lot of his time trying to make sure that Finn was comfortable and safe in his new life, but Rey had been just as kind. He had asked himself many times if Poe was flirting with him or if he was like that all the time. Poe acted the same way around him as he did around Snap and Jess. And sure, Poe was physical with him, holding his hand, hugging him softly, wrapping his arms around him, but he did that with everybody. He could frequently be found playing with Jess’s hair, leaning against Snap dramatically, and he kissed the General on the cheek and called her ‘Mom’ (to annoy her most of the time) when he was brave enough to. Hell, he even draped his arm around Rey’s shoulders when he felt inclined to, and unwanted physical contact with the Jedi in training could literally mean life or death. He liked to be in contact with people. He was a people person. So maybe holding his hand and kissing his temple wasn’t a big deal. Maybe he was just being nice. Maybe he felt sorry for him. Maybe he just thought of him as a friend. 

Maybe he didn’t love him back. 

In all honesty, that was more terrifying than Poe getting hurt because he loved him. He could feel guilty about Poe getting hurt and he could hunt down and kill the person who did it, but if Poe didn’t love him, could he really blame him? What Rebel with any self respect would fall in love with a Storm trooper, defector though he was. There was a history of defectors, apparently, but he hadn’t heard anybody praising the name Bodhi Rook the way that they did Cassian Andor. Bodhi must have felt so alone, standing in that base, surrounded by people who assumed that they knew every ounce of his character by the emblem on his chest. As if that symbol defined him completely. As if his actions meant less than the kind of ship he flew. He must have felt like nobody even tried to look past that uniform. Like nobody tried to see him. 

And Finn didn’t blame them. If the Resistance spent half as much time teaching their children to hate the enemy as the First Order did, then they must have wanted every single person who associated with the Empire dead. So to see an Imperialist in the mess hall must have boiled some blood. And Poe was the proudest, loudest, bravest Rebel of them all. Finn couldn’t blame him for hating him. He kind of did too. 

He could see Poe looking at him from out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t tell from that point of view if he was looking out of discomfort or love. He hoped that it was the later. He was getting nervous. He was on the verge of standing up, apologizing and running away so that he can call Rey and cry about his inability to communicate with other people. But just as he was about to run away, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Poe smiling at him. It wasn’t his huge, full teeth, winning pilot smile, that was saved for people who expected that kind of rough and tough Han Solo demeanor from him. Finn knew that that was all a front. That Poe was really soft and kind and gentle. He wasn’t anything like Han Solo. He knew when it was okay to drop his mask. Solo never quite got that. He always had his defenses up, even around the people that he loved and who loved him. Poe wasn’t like that. His only friend wasn’t his ship. He liked people. He knew when he could trust them. He wasn’t like Han. Not in the bad ways, at least. 

Poe was smiling at him all soft and warm and his hand traveled up from his shoulder to cup his cheek. God, Finn missed the feeling of that hand against his skin. Poe pulled him forward and planted a soft kiss on his neck. A shiver ran up his spine in the best way that it ever had. Poe pulled away and ran his thumb, calloused and rough over Finn’s cheek bone before standing up and walking towards the hanger. 

“Come on, buddy, we’ve got an X-Wing to paint the name of my teenage crush on.”


End file.
